Kirsten Kainz is associate director for research development and translation and research professor in the School of Social Work at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Before joining the School of Social Work, Kainz served as the director of statistics and as an applied statistician at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute, where she is currently a fellow.
Kainz uses quantitative, systemic, and participatory methods to identify and describe approaches that promote equitable child development and early learning. Her work has been funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the U.S. Department of Education Institute of Education Sciences, the American Educational Research Association, as well as by numerous foundations and local school districts. Outside of university research, Kainz has served as a partnership consultant for the Strategic Education Research Partnership Institute and as an elected school board member of a small urban school district.
Degrees and Licenses
Ph.D., Education Research, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
MS, Human Development and Family Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison
BA, Psychology and Theater, St. Mary's University of Minnesota
Primary Program
Doctoral Program
Research and Professional Interests
Education Policy
Education Equity
Intervention Research
Quantitative Methods
Systemic and Participatory Methods
Principal Investigator
Evaluating the Get Ready Guilford: A Developmental Approach
Recent Publications
Kainz, K. (2019). Early academic gaps and Title I programming in high poverty, high minority schools. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 47, 159-168.
Whitaker, R. C., Herman, A. N., Dearth-Wesley, T., Smith, H. G., Burnim, S. B., Myers, E. L., & Kainz, K. (2019). Effect of a trauma-awareness course on teachers’ perceptions of conflict with preschool-aged children from low-income urban households: A cluster randomized clinical trial. JAMA Network Open, 2(4), e193193-e193193.
Méndez, L. I., Crais, E. R., & Kainz, K. (2018). The impact of individual differences on a bilingual vocabulary approach for Latino preschoolers. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 61(4), 897-909.
Kainz, K., Greifer, N., Givens, A., Swietek, K., Zietz, S., Lombardi, B.A., & Kohn, J.L (2017). Covariate selection and balance in propensity score matching methods. Journal of the Society for Social Work and Research, 8, 279-303.
Kainz, K., Lippold, M., *Sabatine, E., & Datus, R. (2017). A systemic intervention agenda for reducing education inequality. Journal of Children and Poverty, 24, 69-80.
Courses
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SOWO 922
Advanced Causal Inference: Propensity Scores and Related Methods
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SOWO 918
Applied Regression Analysis
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